Music Blog

All the music-related posts gathered together in one place.

Chris Squire – The Simon Cowell of Prog?

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Tim Hall

Sometimes it’s not always evil record labels who behave badly towards others. Fans of Yes know how singer Benoit David stepped aside due to voice problems, and his temporary replacement Jon Davidson of Glass Hammer became permanent.

Benoit David’s press release does give the impression he’s been treated rather shabbily.

I was then pleased to learn that Jon Davison would be my replacement as he is an accomplished musician with a fine voice.

I subsequently learnt, from a band member’s interview, that I had officially left Yes and that my departure was permanent.

Now, I did like “Fly From Here”, and even gave it a favourable review. But now they’re giving every impression that they’re in it solely for the money.

I nearly went to see them at the Hammersmith Odeon last November. But the date clashed with The Heather Findlay Band at The Brook in Southampton the same night. Despite having tickets for two other dates of Heather’s tour, I decided I’d rather see a band playing for the love of music than a bunch of has-beens who were only interesting in topping up their pension funds.

I think I made the right decision. When it comes to art vs. commerce, Chris Squire is on the same side as Simon Cowell.

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Delain Fall Victim to Cloth-Eared Bean Counters

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Tim Hall

Some people question why I frequently describe the major labels as being run by cloth-eared bean-counters. It’s because of things like what’s just happened to Symphonic metal band Delain.

You finish your album, and then you don’t know when the release is. But you know that fans are waiting for it. We were so satisfied with the album, and also our producer was satisfied. But some executive nut-case just doesn’t get it, and decides: “Well, let’s not release it.” Other people do get it, and right now, they are talking about how and when to release it. It’s a nightmare! We don’t have control over it, and at the moment, we can only wait.

It’s an old story. Delain were signed to Roadrunner, who got taken over by Warners. Who, if their head-in-the-sand attitude towards digital licensing is anything to go by, show every sign of being the most clueless of the majors. As so often happens with this sort of takeover, Warners fired many the people who the band knew and trusted, and now they’re sitting on the record. Maybe they haven’t got anyone left who knows how to market a band the major label probably would never have signed in the first place. Blogger Ronnie Soo has even speculated that they want to re-mould the band’s singer Charlotte Wessels as a radio-friendly pop star, and ditch the band.

This sort of crap happens a lot with the majors. They give every impression they’re run by marketeers and accountants who’s most significant characteristic is that they are not passionate about music. Yes, this sort of thing has always gone on, but in the days of social media when bands can communicate directly with their fanbase, it’s harder for labels to pull this sort of dick move and get away with it.

This is why I had some serious mixed feelings when I heard that two bands I know had recently been signed. I hope and pray that the bands knew what they were doing, and scrutinised the small print of the contracts carefully, so that they and their fans never get shafted the same way.

Some bands forget that “The guy they trust” in the label when they sign might not be around for the duration of the contract, especially if the label they signed to gets eaten by a bigger one. I’d advise any band signing a record deal (and their lawyer) to work on the assumption that, however friendly the label guys seem, they *will* try to screw you, and make sure the contract is watertight. In the worst case they need the option to walk away without the label being able to hold their record hostage.

Hopefully Delain will be able to release the album, and find a label they can continue to work with. Sadly, and cynical as it may seem, if Warners are really only interested in nothing but money, it’s in their interest for Delain to split up rather than sign to another label. Less competition.

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Steve Wilson on Prog’s Stockholm Syndrome

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Tim Hall

In a great interview with Steve Wilson, along with talk of his most recent album “Grace for Drowning” and a lot interesting thoughts on the present and future state of the music industry, he touches on the image of progressive rock world.

We’re living in a time when a lot of bands are looking around and seeing that the climate has changed so much over the last 20 years. Many feel the right thing to do is perhaps go back and revisit what made their reputation. Yes famously did a return to that last year. For 20-30 years, classic progressive music was incredibly unpopular and unfashionable. I was talking to Steve Hackett about this. He feels for the first time that people actually appreciate the work he did in the ‘70s. He feels it’s only in the last three or four years that he’s begun to feel people value that work as his greatest achievement. For 30 years, he was told it was shit, that he was a dinosaur, and that the music was worthless and no-one was ever going to want to listen to that hippie stuff again. I cannot underestimate how these guys were brainwashed. Robert Fripp and Ian Anderson feel the same. They were brainwashed by the media into thinking everything they did in the ‘70s was worthless junk. It’s almost like abused child syndrome. It took a great amount of reassurance for them to begin to believe that people love that stuff and that it’s the work that their reputation will ultimately rest on.

This is what I’ve been saying for years. In 2012, nobody cares what punk-era hacks like Paul Morley, Tony Parsons or Julie Birchill think any more; their opinions have not stood the test of time, and they haven’t been “relevant” for years. Yes, a few ignorant music journalists who were in nappies where Johnny Rotten swore on the Bill Grundy show still parrot ignorant clichés from that era, but they’re increasingly a minority, and they’re far more likely to be called out for not knowing what they’re talking about.

As for progressive musicians, the cage is not locked, and the jailers have gone. There is no need to pretend they’re “not prog” because of the alleged stigma attached to the genre. So let us have no more of the nonsense about any musician having to completely disassociate themselves from “prog” because it would damage their career.

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Another Celebrity Death

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Tim Hall

So we awoke this morning to the news of Whitney Houston’s death at the age of 48. While I’ve never been a fan of her genre of music, it’s still yet another life cut far too short and another great talent wasted by substance abuse.

In the last few years I’ve got to know quite a few members of various bands, so celebrity deaths come just a little bit closer to home for me. I pray this never happens to anyone I actually know. Makes me wonder if the price of success and fame is too high for some people.

I really detest the way the celebrity fame machine all-too-often chews people up and spits them out, like Aztec deities demanding blood sacrifices. Worse still is the way some pundits glamourise self-descructive behaviour as somehow “rock and roll”. I’m unrepentant about some very harsh things I’ve said in anger about one particular Guardian music critic over things he said about Amy Winehouse before her tragic but all-too-predicable early death.

I can certainly name of a few artists who’s work I admire who give the impression that they’ve gone very close to the abyss and only narrowly avoided falling in.

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The Ghost Moon Orchestra

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Tim Hall

As announced on The Mostly Autumn News Blog

Mostly Autumn are very proud and excited to announce the pre-sale of the special edition of their new album…

The Ghost Moon Orchestra.

The special edition will be limited to 2000 and will consist of, as well as The Ghost Moon Orchestra; a second album entitled A Weather For Poets, which will be an acoustic album with some new and some re-worked Mostly Autumn songs.

“Some songs, which don’t fit the ‘vibe’ of the main album, but work beautifully as acoustic songs make this special edition album the ideal place to showcase them. Also some Mostly Autumn songs work really well acoustically and again, this is the ideal way to put a different slant on them. I hope you will enjoy it.” Bryan Josh

This special edition is on sale at £20.00 (plus P & P) only from Mostly Autumn records and we hope to be shipping it late May/early June.

Their previous album “Go Well Diamond Heart” saw the band bounce back strongly for the first record with Olivia Sparnenn taking over on lead vocals. With a stable lineup that’s gelled strongly over the course of three tours in the past eighteen months, I have very high expectations for this album.

After the disbanding of Iain Jennings’ band Breathing Space, it will be very interesting to see how much he contributes to Mostly Autumn’s songwriting on the new one. Is “Ice”, the song he co-wrote on the special edition of the last album a taste of things to come? I hope so.

As an independent band not dependent on a record label, Mostly Autumn fund the recording by pre-orders, so if you want to support them, go and order the album now rather than wait until June to buy it!

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The Reasoning – And Another Thing

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Tim Hall

The Reasoning’s long-awaited new EP, “And Another Thing” is now available for pre-order from the band’s website.

The four-track EP marks both the end and the beginning of an era, in that it’s the final release by the band as independent artists on Comet Records, and the first new studio recording of the 5-piece lineup of the band.

The official release date is 12th March 2012, but the band will dispatch pre-orders received before the end of February a week early.

Oh, and the first 500 orders received will be signed. So go and order it now!

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Landfill Prog

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Tim Hall

I’ve been listening to “recommendations” on last.fm recently, for the first time in a while. As before, it tends to overplay the same small subset of bands too much, including rather too many very similar-sounding power-metal bands and NWOBHM also-rans with the word “Witch” in their title. One other act who keep coming up is a European prog band. Their last.fm Wiki description is a cut-and-paste from Prog Archives describing them as being in the style of classic neo-prog bands like Marillion, IQ and, er, Pendragon. Which is the sort of thing to make you fear the worst.

I won’t name the band, but I have to say I wasn’t impressed by what I heard.

The singer sounds as though he wants to be Fish, but without the charisma. The guitarist tries to be Steve Rothery, only without a fraction of the talent. It’s all there; the widdly solo on a 1980s synth, the portentous spoken-word section, even some sub-Pink Floyd FX. The lack of originality might not have mattered so much had the songwriting been great, but sadly, it’s very very ordinary. Bands like this are to prog-rock what The Kooks are to indie.

If bands like The Kooks are labelled as “landfill indie”, then this is surely landfill prog. The stuff that falls well, well below the Sturgeon threshold.

This isn’t a “prog” versus “progressive” thing by the way; that’s something that always degenerates into a “my music is better than your music” pissing contest. The real problem with bands like this is not that they’re “prog” rather than “progressive”, it’s simply that they’re not very good. Neo-prog, when done well, can be great. Bands like IQ or Magenta demonstrate this. They might still wear their influences on their sleeves sometimes, but they can write strong original material with enough of their own identity to be far more than a derivative pastiche.

Which is something the landfill indie bands conspicuously fail to do.

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Black Sabbath

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Tim Hall

I’m part-way through reading Iron Man, the autobiography of Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, which I had as a Christmas present. A fascinating read so far, with tales of rock and roll excess mixed with the stories behind some of the songs, beginning with Iommi growing up in a working-class part of Birmingham. The description of Iommi’s industrial accident, which is not for the squeamish, out to server as a reminder as to why all that health and safety legislation some people want to abolish is there for.

It’s prompted me to dig out a lot of old Ozzy-era Black Sabbath albums, many of which I’ve not played for years, and it’s reminded me just how consistently good they were. Also it’s remarkable just how well-mixed and mastered the albums are, especially when you consider how little time they took recording their earliest ones.

I’d say all the first six albums deserve to be in any self-respecting rock and metal fan’s record collection. It starts with their debut, when they were in transition from the blues band Earth, and blues-rock workouts sit alongside the doomladen distorted tritones with which they made their name, and the quality is consistent right the way through to the metal juggernaut of “Sabotage“, with the face-melting centrepiece “Symptom of the Universe”

Black Sabbath, despite some of their Hammer Horror imagery, were never really the Satanic band portrayed in some sections of the media. When you know that main lyricist Geezer Butler was an Irish Catholic, a song like “After Forever“, with it’s infamous line “Do you want to see The Pope on the end of rope” is clearly all about sectarian bigotry.

As an aside, playing seventh album “Technical Ecstacy” and Led Zeppelin’s “Presence” back-to-back makes me think the often maligned and in my opinion somewhat underrated Sabbath album is the one of the pair that’s aged the best. Take away the obvious classics “Achilles Last Stand” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” from Presence, and you’re left with rather a lot of filler.

The best album of the lot has to be “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath“. The monumental title track has to be one of the best songs about being totally pissed-off with life, the universe and everything ever written; “Bog blast all of you” is a great line. But the whole of the rest of the album is pretty much flawless, and displays a far greater musical sophistication than anything they’d done before, whether it’s the keyboard-led “Who Are You”, or the ambitious multi-layered closing “Spiral Architect”.

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Panic Room and The Reasoning sign to Esoteric Recordings

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Tim Hall

Major and completely unexpected announcements from both Panic Room and The Reasoning. Both bands have signed record deals with Esoteric Recordings, and imprint of Cherry Red records.

Panic Room’s album, which they will be recording in January and February is slated for an early Summer release, while The Reasoning’s is due in November.

Both bands have put in a lot of hard word slogging round what is euphemistically known as “The toilet circuit”, steadily building a fanbase and honing their acts to the point where they’re capable of giving far higher profile bands a run for their money. They’ve probably got as far as they were going to get as independent artists, and signing with a label is what needed to happen if they were to get to the next level.

I’ve followed both bands from their very first gigs (The Uplands Tavern in Swansea, and The Town Hall in Lydney), and it’s exciting to see where they’re going to go next. While I don’t expect them to be headlining enormodomes just yet, being signed to a label will open a lot of doors, whether it be prestigious support slots or support for overseas tours.

While I’ve heard too many horror stories in the past of labels interfering in the creative process to the detriment of an artists long-term future, I’m confident this isn’t going to happen here. It’s not like either band is a bunch of fresh-faced innocents just out of The Brit School about to be chewed-up and spat out by the major label sausage machine. Given their artist roster (including prog veterans Hawkwind and Van der Graaf Generator), Esoteric Recordings don’t sound like that sort of label.

Does rather make a mockery of the ridiculous claim that Panic Room don’t want to “dirty their hands with commerce”, doesn’t it?

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Top Ten Songs of 2011

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Tim Hall

We’ve had my ten top albums of the year, here’s my top ten songs. Not being a fan of top-40 style singles, almost all of these are album tracks – in fact there’s only one single on the entire list.

As is usual for this sort of thing, it’s a completely personal and subjective list. But I’d much rather listen to any of these than any X-factor bollocks, and so should you. So there!

10: Yes – Fly From Here
The title track of Yes’ most recent album saw the “Drama” team of Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn return with a much-expanded version of what started life as an unrecorded Buggles song. I suppose calling a five-part prog-rock epic taking up half an album a “song” is cheating, but I’m setting the rules here, and this is certainly the best thing Yes have recorded for years.

9: Journey – Edge of the Moment
One of the standout songs from “Eclipse”, this classy hard rocker is a great example of the other side of Journey’s music from the radio-friendly ballads.

8: Blood Ceremony – Daughter of the Sun
The ten-minute epic that closes track of their second album “Living With the Ancients” is a great example of why I’ve described them as sounding like Black Sabbath fronted by Angela Gordon, with it’s combination of bewitching flute and doom-laden guitar.

7: Mostly Autumn – Questioning Eyes
It’s not a completely new song (It originally appeared on Breathing Space’s 2008 album “Below the Radar”), but the powerful live version on “Still Beautiful” rises to even greater heights. It shows the extent to which Olivia Sparnenn has grown as a vocalist in the past three years.

6: Mastodon – The Sparrow
The multi-layered ballad with it’s rich harmonies is my clear favourite from “The Hunter”. Probably because it’s the most prog thing on the album.

5: Liam Davison – Heading Home
Liam’s long-awaited solo album “A Treasure of Well-Set Jewels” was one of the surprises of 2011, a well-crafted album with a very capable supporting cast. This song is a standout with it’s wonderful interplay between Liam’s soaring lead guitar, Iain Jennings’ swirling Hammond organ and Paul Teasdale’s propulsive bass riff.

4: Panic Room – O Holy Night
A welcome and unexpected end-of-year surprise was this spine-tingling version of the traditional carol released as a free Christmas download from their website.

3: Heather Findlay – Seven
Heather’s solo EP “The Phoenix Suite” took quite a few listens to fully appreciate, and once the record finally clicked, this atmospheric and brooding number became the firm favourite.

2: Opeth – Folklore
The dramatic closing section on this song with the galloping bass riff has to be one of the most exciting pieces of music I’ve heard all year.

1: Steven Wilson – Raider II
Another lengthy prog epic is my “song” of the year. With its swirling Mellotron and spiralling sax and flute it sounds like a cross between 70s King Crimson and Canterbury-scene jazz-rock dragged into the 21st century, and the heaviest sections are the bits without guitars. Amazing piece of music.

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